Politics

The Russian government has branded five prominent independent groups as “foreign agents,” Human Rights Watch said today. The government’s actions are part of its biggest crackdown on the rights to free expression and association in Russia since the end of the Soviet era.

 New data released today by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) shows the need for urgent action to end female genital mutilation and child marriage – two practices that affect millions of girls across the globe. 

With the goal of ending child marriage in 12 of the most highly affected countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Britain is working with the UN to deliver a scheme to help 6 million girls worldwide escape child marriage.

The US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have targeted American Muslims in abusive counterterrorism “sting operations” based on religious and ethnic identity, Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute said in a report released today.

 A train carrying the remains of many of the nearly 300 victims of the Malaysia Airlines plane downed over Ukraine arrived in Ukrainian government territory on Tuesday as a separatist leader handed over the plane's black boxes to Malaysian experts.

 World number-one platinum producer Anglo American Platinum (AMSJ.J) is to sell a swathe of its most labor-intensive South African mines after a five-month strike shattered its hopes of ever making them profitable.

Fighting flared in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Monday as investigators began to inspect the bodies of victims of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17

At least 50 Palestinians were killed on Sunday by Israeli shelling in a Gaza neighborhood, where bodies were strewn in the street and thousands fled for shelter to a hospital packed with wounded, witnesses and health officials said.

The group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its allies are imposing “untold hardship and suffering” on Iraqi civilians, the United Nations said today in a report that also casts doubt as to whether Iraqi security forces (ISF) and associated forces have done enough to pr